For most of
their market life USB flash drives weren't true SSDs. But 10 years ago that
changed. And we're now seeing some worthy and reliable products appearing in
the humble USB form factor - using modern
flash memory and modern
flash controller
technologies - which have many applications in embedded and industrial
markets.

new industrial secure eUSB
3.0 10-pin SSDs from Virtium

Editor:-
August 22, 2016 - Virtium
recently
announced
new models of eUSB 3.0 10-pin models in its TuffDrive SSD range which offers
much faster speed than eUSB 2.0 at about half the power consumption.

Capacities
range from 2GB to 256GB, while drawing less than 1W. Size is 36.9mm x 26.6 mm.

editor:-
February 8, 2016 - Kingston
today
announced
it has acquired the USB technology and assets of IronKey from Imation. dual port GbE joins USB 3 in the same M.2 SSD

Editor:-
November 3, 2015 - InnoDisk
today
announced
a product first for the M.2 SSD
market in the shape of a dual port isolated GbE compatible model -
EGUL-G201 - which also has a USB
3 interface, and fits in a 22x60mm footprint. InnoDisk says the ethernet modules
have strong electrical isolation, ESD and surge protection. enterprise-class write attenuation comes to industrial USB SSDs

Editor:-
February 19, 2015 - When I see an assertion about 100x better flash
endurance - I smile and think back to an article
my SSD care scheme is the
best - in May 2012 - which discusses this marketing idea and some of the
unerlying technologies. So why mention it again today?

"hyMap reduces
Write Amplification
by a factor of more than 100 in fragmented usage pattern and for small file
random writes. Thereby, the reduction in effectively used write-erase-cycles
results in higher performance, longer life and shorter random access response
times. As a result, in many applications hyMap together with Hyperstone
controllers and MLC flash enables higher reliability and data retention than
other controllers using SLC. hyMap does
not require
any external DRAM or SRAM."

In the same announcement - Dr. Jan Peter
Berns, Managing Director of Hyperstone - acknowledges that while these
issues have already been discussed intensively for several years in the
enterprise market. Hyperstone's new hyMap controller technology brings this
kind of improvement into smaller, low power SSDs such as SD/MMC and USB which
don't have the same kind of budgets for DRAM and CPU power as enterprise SSDs.Who Needs 10Gbps USB?

Editor:-
May 22, 2012 - sometimes if I'm watching a movie I realize it's going to be
bad - but in a way which is nevertheless all too fascinating to watch. How bad
it will get? Look! - see it's getting worse - but still taking itself
seriously. So - instead of zapping it like I should - I stay transfixed.
Such bad movies are an artform.

What about promotional videos though?
- on the subject of SSDs...

Mostly these are just time wasting. But
today - in the "so dreadful I kept watching it nearly to the end"
category was a
new video
on YouTube from RunCore about its Xapear SSD.

RunCore was the first
company to haul "phone to
purge capability"
over the cost
chasm which divides military
SSDs over to the
consumer SSD market
- which it did 2
years ago - and the new video is simply about their latest model which
combines RFID with the phone zap technology in an external USB connected SSD.

As a security
concept I was convinced the idea had merit - when I first wrote about it 2
years ago. So I wasn't keen to see another new video about the same topic. But
I'm glad I did - because it's an artform. ...click to
watch videoNeoMagic demos FPGA simulation of USB MagicVault controller

Editor:-
February 27, 2012 - NeoMagic
today announced
that the company is ready to demonstrate MagicVault, its USB 3.0 based UFD USB
Flash Drive Controller solution on an FPGA platform.

NeoMagic says
FPGA platform test results for the MagicVault flash drive solution indicate a
significant performance improvement over currently available products. In
addition to testing, NeoMagic is discussing MagicVault and other new products in
development with potential strategic partners and investors. Patriot launches native USB 3 flash drive

"Patriot
is one of the first companies to integrate a native single-chip USB 3.0 flash
memory controller. By pairing the controller with our Quad-Channel technology,
we're able to maximize performance with the Supersonic series," said Les
Henry, Patriot Memory's VP of Engineering. SSD Data Recovery Concepts

It's hard enough understanding the
design of any single SSD. And there are so many different designs in the
market.

If you've ever wondered what it looks like at the other end of
the SSD supply chain - when a user has a damaged SSD which contains priceless
data with no usable backup - this article - written by one of a rare new
breed of
SSD recovery
experts will give you some idea. I've waited more than 3 years to find
someone to write an article on this subject for you. And now it's only a click
away - read the
article

"Creating
a whole new form factor SSD in the very limited time was quite a challenge"
said PhotoFast's chief engineer Eddie Wang. "Thanks to support from
SandForce, we finally
made it".
upgrading old PCs with new SSDs

I've often told readers who asked me about this subject - that they
could be wasting their time trying to upgrade old notebooks with
PATA or
SATA SSDs - because
most of the speedup benefits - if any - will be lost by the latency damping
effects of cheap and slow bridge
chips on the motherboard - and that - unlike in a server - notebooks have
precious little CPU headroom.

It's nice to see these views are
shared by the author of this article who works for an
SSD IP vendor. ...read
the articleioSafe Launches Disaster Proof Backup SSD

"The new ioSafe Solo SSD is the world's most rugged and versatile
desktop external hard drive. It can be used alone or in conjunction with any
offsite or online backup
strategy to add real time, zero data loss, synchronous disaster protection to
any data that sits vulnerable," said ioSafe CEO, Robb Moore.

That was about 100x
faster than the
RS-232
style serial interfaces used in earlier generations of computers which it
replaced.

The USB is now widely used in Macs, PC's and even Linux
systems. USB is typically used to connect devices such as printers, scanners,
keyboards, digital cameras, MP3 players and external storage devices.

In
June 2002, Intel and others started to demonstrate
USB 2.0, which increases the speed of the peripheral to PC connection
from 12 megabits per second (Mbps) on USB 1.1 to up to 480 Mbps on USB 2.0, or
40 times faster than with the older technology.

USB 3.0 - which
at 5Gbps is
10x faster than USB 2.0 started shipping in December 2009. USB 3
offers throughput similar to
eSATA 2.0 - upto
approx 300MB/s.

Editor:- September 13, 2005 - STEC today
announced
the industry's first solid state drive with SATA and USB interfaces on one
drive.

The
Zeus
Dual Interface SSD is the only available Flash drive that allows users to
easily remove a single SSD from one system and use it in a 2nd system with
different interface requirements. This makes it an optimal solution for
applications that require that the SSD have a high-speed
SATA interface for
digital mission data storage in a combat system and an industry standard
USB interface for direct
connection to a debriefing station or other PC.

Since Zeus Dual Interface SSDs offer both SATA and USB connectivity,
customers can work with an SSD design that is extremely flexible and optimized
for use as a removable
mass memory storage device. The product removes complexity from the design of
host applications by eliminating the need to design interface adapters for the
SSD.

Zeus Dual Interface SSDs have a
3.5-inch footprint and
a 9.5 mm case height.and are available with capacities from 12 to 192 GB with
sustained read/write rates of 60MBytes per second. Zeus SSDs are MIL-STD-810F
compliant, and offer patented
purge features.

...Later:- 2010 - this kind of dual interface technology has
since become a popular way for SSD vendors to offer user installable SSD
upgrades - in which the user transfers data from a rotating storage notebook
onto an external SSD using USB - and then (hoping for the best) replaces the
internal HDD with the SSD.